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Marching forward with our lessons on Losing Trick Count/Cover Cards and Self-Sustaining Suits/Suit Quality, it’s time to delve into bidding where we have strong hands with unbalanced shape. Sure, we all love picking up a hand with nearly half the points in the deck, yet it can be a bidding challenge when holding a shapely hand with most of the points in two suits. So what’s a player to do? Let’s consider how the strong jump shift can help the opener eloquently describe their hand and drive towards a game contract. But first, we have a bit of sad news. While our recent three lessons Losing Trick Count and Cover Cards has served us well, we cannot always use LTC/CC hand evaluation criteria to immediately count our winners and losers. Of course as we’ve previously seen, when you do hold a semi self-sustaining suit then by all means go right ahead and begin using LTC (but use caution when both are minor suits).

Since Strong Jump Shifts by opener are easier to grasp than the somewhat mysterious Reverse bid, let’s start here to begin our journey and consider Reverses in our next lesson. Here are the criteria for opener’s Strong Jump Shift:

– 19-21 points – count distributional points with semi self-sustaining suit
– Responder conjures up a suit or Notrump bid showing 6+ points without showing a fit
– Imbalanced opener hand – Likely a two suited hand or perhaps all honors in two suits
– Thus, rebidding 3 Notrump is not appropriate – at least not from opener’s perspective
– Opener shows a 4-5 Losing Trick Count hand, making a game forcing bid
– Opener’s 3 level jump is in a lower ranking suit than opener’s first suit*
* Exception – As we will see later, a 2 level “reverse jump” also is a Strong Jump Shift

Since opener is showing 19 – 21 points and responder has 6+ points, the principle question is, “Play game (or higher) in Notrump or a major suit?” In rare circumstances the partnership may play in a minor suit game or slam, such as when the pair has a 9+ card minor suit without a stopper in either major suit. Okay, let’s take a look some hands and bidding.

Lopsided honors in the minor suits makes for awkward bidding by the opener. With almost all of the points in the minors, careful bidding is a must. On the first hand a 3 Notrump contract should easily roll home. Not so on the second hand should the opponents lead the Spade suit. Bottom line, with almost all of the points in the minor suits and no effective stoppers in either major suit, opener should not open 2 Notrump.

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Hello RM,
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Sorry to hear you are unable to view our links for Polling You #79. Even non-members should be able to view the video link here:
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Click here to view Teaser for Non-Members in standard resolution (800×450)http://bridgehands-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/Polling_You_79_Part_5_Teaser_Non-Members_800x450/Teaser_Non-Members_800x450.html
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I apologize for the extra month to complete the Polling You episode #79 on Strong Jump Shifts. Yet like the prior Part 77-78 combo issue on Preempts, these videos are running over 3 hours in length with over a dozen illustrative hands in addition to the lesson on bidding theory.
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Warm Regards,
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Michael
BridgeHands